Mithridates II the Great

Justin says his achievements earned him the surname “the Great”. His coins first carry the title “Soter” (Saviour) and from c. 109/8 “King of Kings”; he appears in a tall tiara and, on the reverse, the seated archer sits on a high-backed throne instead of the Greek omphalos stone.

Returning to the Achaemenid title was a deliberate message: the Arsacids presented themselves as heirs of the Achaemenids (Iranica). The throne replacing the omphalos means the Greek visual language was fading.

Titles are claims to power, not proof of legitimacy; what made a king acceptable to his subjects was security of roads and markets.

Sima Qian, the Han court historian, calls Parthia “Anxi” in chapter 123 of the Shiji: a land of hundreds of cities large and small, growing rice, wheat and vines, with merchants who travel by cart and boat to neighbouring lands, and silver coins bearing the king’s face that change with each new king. He says the king of Anxi sent twenty thousand horsemen to meet the Han envoys at the eastern border.

Iranica dates the embassy to c. 115 and the first caravan to 114 BCE (following Herrmann 1938).

“Silk Road” is a 19th-century name and no single treaty “opened” it; but the security Parthia imposed from Merv to the Euphrates made long-distance trade possible. The Parthians were middlemen and profited from transit dues (Isidore of Charax lists the stations of the route).

The wealth of nations comes from free trade and safe roads; a state that keeps the road safe and levies reasonable dues profits more than one that makes war.

Strabo says Tigranes “at first had served as a hostage among the Parthians; then by their means he returned to his country, in compensation for which service they obtained seventy valleys in Armenia”. After Mithridates’ death Tigranes took the valleys back and even laid waste the lands of Nineveh and Arbela.

Holding princes hostage was a tool of diplomacy; but loyalty bought that way ended with the buyer’s death.

An agreement founded on force breaks when the balance of power shifts; a lasting treaty rests on mutual benefit.

Plutarch says Orobazus, envoy of “king Arsaces”, came to Sulla, and that this was the first time the Parthians asked the Romans for “alliance and friendship”. Sulla set three chairs and sat between the king of Cappadocia and the Parthian envoy; the Parthian king later had Orobazus executed.

The envoy’s execution shows that at the Parthian court the scene was a humiliation, not a treaty. Iranica calls the outcome unclear; the claim to parity or superiority began with this first meeting and lasted three centuries.

Diplomacy between great powers rests on mutual respect; a show of superiority looks cheap but costs dearly.

Justin describes the Parthian army as “not like other nations, of free men, but chiefly consisting of slaves”, each man furnishing horsemen in proportion to his wealth. Iranica sees a society of great landowners, dependent serfs, slaves and free villages; according to Wolski the nobles gained vast estates through the conquests.

Whether to call the system “feudal” is disputed: Widengren for, Schippmann against. Justin’s figure is also uncertain: in Watson’s translation “only four hundred” of fifty thousand horsemen were free, while Iranica gives 4,000.

Power resting on great estates and dependent labour makes the king dependent on the nobles; after Mithridates II this led to wars of succession. Individual freedom and widely held property are the basis of a stable state.

In the last years Babylonian tablets know a king named Gotarzes. A relief at Bisotun, now almost destroyed, names in Herzfeld’s reading “Gotarzes the satrap of satraps” and “the great king Mithradates”. After Mithridates’ death the Armenians took back the seventy valleys and a period began that Sellwood called the “Parthian Dark Age”.

The date of death (91 for Assar, 88/7 for Iranica) and Gotarzes’ standing (rival or partner) are disputed.

A state that depends on one great man shakes at his death; institutions outlast heroes.